A receiver (e.g., the GPS receiver, a Satellite Positioning System (SPS) receiver) may obtain a signal from a satellite constellation (e.g. a plurality of electronic satellites working in concert, a Global'naya Navigatsionnaya Sputnikovaya Sistema (GLONASS) satellite system, a Galileo satellite system, etc.). The signal may enable the receiver to determine a positional information (e.g. a location, a speed, a direction of travel, etc.). The satellite signal may be composed of an ephemeris data (e.g. a set of values that provides the positions of an astronomical object at a given time) and/or a time counter value (e.g. a time of the week value, a time stamp that may be a may be present in a time interval of the satellite signal that provides a seventeen-bit counter time value reset each week). The time counter may increment by a specified time interval.
In a context of the GPS receiver, the time counter value may be a time of the week value. The time of the week value may be a seventeen-bit counter that may increment by one in a sub-frame (e.g. a time interval of a TOW signal). A process of decoding the time of the week value may be a method of decoding time. The time interval may be a sub-frame.
The method of decoding time may be unreliable at a signal-to-noise ratio (e.g. a ratio of a signal power to a noise power corrupting the signal) that is lower than a threshold value. In an environment in which an object impedes a reception of the signal (e.g. a building, a valley wall, an underground location, etc.), the signal-to-noise ratio may decrease. The object may obscure the signal from a satellite. Thus, the SPS receiver may not have a sufficient amount of signal data to determine its position.
Additionally, the method of decoding time may use the SPS receiver to compare an estimated time counter value of a different value of satellites associated with the receiver. The receiver may observe the estimated time counter value received from each of the different satellites in a current time interval. If the receiver is unable to confirm that the estimated time counter value is correct, the receiver may discard the estimated values for the current time interval, and observe estimated time interval values in the next interval. It may take many different time intervals before the time interval value is decoded. As a result, a user of the receiver may have to wait for the receiver to confirm the estimated time interval value for an extended period of time. Valuable time may be lost, making the receiver slow, cumbersome, and difficult to use in many time sensitive environments.